Siena, welcome to South Dakota

The entire Siena traveling party flew this morning from Idaho to South Dakota. So the Saints touched down within arguably the two most obscure states in the union on the same day.

This wasn’t the plan.

Our entire group was scheduled to fly from Boise to Minneapolis. From there, Fran McCaffery, John D’Argenio and six players were to fly direct to Albany. Everyone else — me included — was headed to Detroit and then to Albany.

But on the way from Boise to Minneapolis, a lady seated next to assistant coach Mitch Buonaguro began having difficulty breathing. We later learned she suffered from emphysema.

Doctors were paged.

Someone called the Mayo Clinic.

And low and behold, we made an emergency landing … in Rapid City, South Dakota.

From what I could tell, there were neither rapids nor a city anywhere near where our plane touched down. We appeared to be landing in the middle of a large cow pasture, minus the cows.

Anyway, the whole incident delayed our flight by about an hour.

The eight headed direct to Albany still made their connection.

The rest of us are now in Detroit — we don’t arrive in Albany until after 11 p.m.